Michael Gove sets out his vision for Defra & the UK environment
Standing in WWF UK’s stunning timber built Head Office in leafy Woking, Michael Gove Secretary of State for Defra, gave his first speech on the environment today.
His 30 minute presentation was full of quotes from Larkin, Keats and Byron as Gove stressed that Brexit was an opportunity to rewrite our environmental policies and reward environmentally responsible land use.
Gove re-committed to woodland creation as part of his CAP reform program and to the target of 11 million trees in England, “because trees are not only a source of beauty and wonder, living evidence of our investment for future generations, they are a carbon sink, a way to manage flood risk and a habitat for precious species.”
Timber and forestry were not mentioned, and at Confor we remained very concerned that this 11 million trees, is a long way short of that needed to compensate for forest loss occurring due to the restructuring of 1970’s plantations, and also short of the Committee on Climate Change recommendations of 15 thousand hectares per year of woodland creation.
Gove was insistent that the Government would not reverse European environmental regulations but that we could do so much more once we had ditched the Common Agricultural Policy. The focus on farm support was that it should be a reward for “environmental protection and enhancement”. Hill farmers were a special case and will continue to be “generously supported” after Brexit, to ensure that the “human ecology” of these areas was protected, but only if they deliver environmental benefits.
The long awaited Defra 25 year environment plan was postponed until early 2018; however interestingly Gove started that “Critical to its success will be adopting as rigorous a methodology as possible to setting goals and reporting success or failure. Which is why I have written to Professor Dieter Helm, the Chair of the Natural Capital Committee, to ask his Committee to draw up advice on what our Plan should aim to achieve and how it should seek to do so.”
This is perhaps the best avenue for significant woodland expansion; a Natural Capital approach will support better decision-making about land-use, and how that use should be supported. Well planned and managed sustainable forests can deliver so much and should be valued highly by the Natural Capital Committee.
The Secretary of State was insistent that the UK could lead the world in setting high environmental standards, and he is clearly not afraid to radically reform agricultural support payments and to deliver environmental gain. If he is serious about sustainability this will need to include reversing the decline in tree planting and reducing the UK’s dependence on imported timber.
County Councillor (Cons) Hartismere, Suffolk.
7yWonderful though woodland creation is, let's not forget the importance of pasture, upland hill farming and wetlands. Subsidies will need to be continued to maintain open landscapes as well as forest, and the diverse uses of land necessary for both wildlife and the more traditional ways of life that we value.
Lecturer at Bangor University
7yThanks Andrew. It seems to me that the liklihood must be for agricultural subsidies to fall, and be focussed on environmental output rather than income support, or production. This seems likely to result in increased woodland area by two mechanisms. The first will be lower agricultural land prices which may result in woodland creation activity, by owners, for both environmental and timber production purposes. The second will be natural woodland regeneration on less-used or even abandoned marginal agricultural land. The latter will be dispersed and slow, and likely to produce valuble scrub, and eventually woodland of environmental rather than timber production value. I find it hard to see the maintenance of current timber production, decades in the future as a priority for public subsidy, but I suspect Confor will have a different view!